Trivia / El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera

• Colbert Bump: The series received one after Jorge co-wrote and directed The Book of Life for Reel FX.
• Creator's Favorite: Jorge said on his Twitter that his favorite characters were Frida and Grandpapi.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Manny's English voice is done by Alanna Ubach.
  • Carlos Alazraqui, voice of Puma Loco, voices Black Cuervo's grandma.
• Diagnosis of God: Manny was retroactively confirmed to be autistic by Jorge, who was diagnosed with autism himself long after the show ended.
• Executive Meddling: Sketches of El Tigre's second season, which never did exist, can be found on deviantArt.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only Season 1 is on DVD, while Season 2 is not. El Tigre was also not available on Paramount+ until July of 2023 while almost every other Nickelodeon show was beforehand.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's had a Happy Meal tie-in in January 2008. Available were toys of El Tigre, White Pantera, Puma Loco, and Señor Sinestro. Prototypes of Frida and Chipotle Jr were made but never sold.
• The Other Darrin: Danny Trejo voiced El Mal Verde for his first appearance in "Yellow Pantera". The rest of the series has him voiced by John DiMaggio.
• The Other Marty: Daran Norris voiced White Pantera in the pilot. The series proper has him voiced by Eric Bauza.
• Playing Against Type: A downplayed example. Miguel Ferrer was typically type-casted as intimidating or smug villains, but on the show, he voiced the First El Tigre, who functioned more as a heroic mentor to Manny despite his inner turmoil over never being able to decide between being good and evil.
• Screwed by the Network: In the case of the U.S., the next five episodes following "The Good, the Bad, and the Tigre" were premiered very early in the morning completely out of no where. After that, the remainder of the series was played on Nicktoons Network with again little to no promotion. Even before that the show was also prone to being broadcasted once a week (at some points around midnight or early in the morning) and even being pre-opted a few times by other shows (notably SpongeBob).
  • When asked about the cancellation, Jorge and a couple of other staff members actually said it happened because the show couldn't beat SpongeBob in ratings ^note  At this point Nickelodeon was kinda obsessed with having shows that were on par with Spongebob as a business tactic to keep the company going, justify animation costs, and keep up with Cartoon Network). If they couldn't hit that show's standards, they were declared a lost cause and punted to a death slot or Nicktoons Network to be burned off. Both Danny Phantom and My Life as a Teenage Robot were likewise cancelled for this reason.. He even recently made an interesting picture dedicated to that fact.^noteJorge holds absolutely no ire towards the show itself (and is actually a fan), just the circumstances. However, on a lighter note Jorge admitted that had El Tigre not been canceled he might not have ever gotten the chance to make The Book of Life or Maya and the Three, so some good has come from the ashes.
• Troubled Production: The Licensed Game based on the show developed by Blue Tongue sadly suffered from this. It was initially planned to be a more robust game with more levels, better gameplay, Manny's house serving as a hub world, a multiplayer battle mode and other unknown features, in addition to having a standard development time of about a year. But during its pre-production Nickelodeon internally announced that the show was canceled after just a few episodes, and THQ in a fit of panic ordered Blue Tongue to have the game finished and released while the show was still relevant, leading to its development time being reduced to just 10 WEEKS. As a result most of their initial plans got scrapped and the game was released as a very short and simplistic 2D side-scrolling platformer that mostly garnered mediocre reviews, in addition to having a Nintendo Wii version cancelled and being released for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS only. On the bright side, at least one of the artists managed to receive some compliments from Jorge.
• What Could Have Been: Jorge tried pitching the series to both Cartoon Network and Disney before it was picked up by Nickelodeon.
• Word of God: It should be noted that El Tigre was canceled and had to be swiftly tied up in its Grand Finale; however, Jorge still gave out some nifty tidbits of What Could Have Been. Spoilers Ahoy.
  • Romances and Related Info:
    • Manny and Zoe were friends while they were in preschool, but Manny eventually left her behind a year later when he met Frida in detention.
    • Manny and Frida drifted apart during high school, and during that time Manny dated Zoe while Frida dated Sergio, Diego and Django.
    • Manny and Frida eventually get back in touch sometime during college, and they eventually marry and have triplets (one hero, one villain and one undecided). Frida continues to pursue her dreams of being a rockstar while Manny went to college to become an artist.
    • Zoe and Django at first simply get together in order to make Manny and Frida jealous, but they eventually grow to love each other genuinely.
    • Diego and Sergio never let go of their crushes on Frida, leading to them creating artificial wives based on her.
    • Puma Loco and Sartana were a couple way before the series proper; they have a half-skeleton-half-mecha son called Son of Sartana/Machete, who is also Django's father.
    • Sartana is actually one of the many children of La Muerte and Xibalba from The Book of Life. It was Puma Loco breaking her heart that led her to villainy and losing her godhood.
    • Rodolfo and Maria remarry once Rodolfo gives up White Pantera for good.
    • Apparently, Django's mother was actually an ex-girlfriend of Rodolfo's.
    • The reason that White Pantera broke up with Voltura was that she cheated on him while under the impression he was cheating on her.
  • Miscellaneous:
    • Diego is actually a lab experiment/clone; he cloned himself to create his father and grandfather.
    • Billy, a.k.a. the Cactus Kid, was an orphan raised by his village (and cacti). His hat is what allowed him to control the cacti.
    • The Golden Eagle Twins' father was one of the heroes killed by El Mal Verde. No word on whether this had something to do with their villainy.
    • Rodolfo and the Seventh Samurai both were divorced because their wives could not handle their heroic lifestyles; they even met at a support group dealing with that very issue!
    • Manny got his belt when he accidentally fell into the volcano. He also inflicted his scar on himself during his first fight, showing him that his powers are just as harmful to him as they are to others.
    • At an older age, Manny will die while protecting Frida.
    • One of Justice Jaguar's sisters was Carmen, Manolo's mother, making Manolo Puma Loco's first cousin.
    • Joaquin is an ancestor of Frida's; her last name is actually Suarez-Mondragon.
    • Silver Wolf, who was a disguise for the Titanium Titan, was actually supposed to separate and become his own being.
    • The Titanium Titan's name is Tito.
    • Related to the above, Sartana was the eldest of the death god couple's 9 children and was Xibalba's favorite. Her relationship with said siblings could only be described as competitive, and the act that ultimately got her banished involved her doing something very despicable to one of her sisters.
    • She also had white wings prior to her banishment, which were cut off.
    • Sartana's bandito army rises from the Land of the Cursed when she summons them.
    • Sartana's banishment began in 1962.
    • Similar to Manny and El Tigre I, White Pantera and Puma Loco can summon spirits similar to the Ancient Tiger Spirit. It can be assumed this is also true for the other Rivera heroes and villains.
    • The mystical objects of power (including the ones used by the Riveras) are crafted from the blood of ancient gods.
    • Manny was also confirmed to be on the autism spectrum, just like Jorge.
• Write Who You Know: Manny and Frida's personalities are apparently based on those of Jorge Gutiérrez and his wife Sandra. Interesting people!
  • It goes far beyond that. Rodolfo and Grandpapi are based on Jorge Gutiérrez's father and grandfather. The former was an artist, the latter was in the military, and Gutiérrez said that when he was young he looked up to both of them but couldn't decide who he wanted to follow in the footsteps of, which served as the inspiration for Manny's conflict.
  • Miracle City was also based off of Mexico City, where Gutiérrez was originally from. According to him, his grandfather would often say it was a miracle they survived any day on the streets on Mexico City, hence the name.
  • Frida's family was based on that of Jorge Gutiérrez's own wife; in the same way Frida's family were all lawmen, they all worked in medical fields.

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